Historical Background
Paul's Adam and Christ parallel in Romans 5 anchors the doctrine. Irenaeus read Adam's disobedience as the act of a childlike race that Christ recapitulates and reverses. Augustine, reading the Old Latin rendering of Romans 5:12 as 'in whom all sinned,' taught that humanity was present in Adam and shares his guilt. Medieval theology debated the transmission mechanism; the Reformers confessed inherited guilt and corruption together; Catholic teaching at Trent affirmed transmission by propagation, not imitation, while stopping short of the Reformers' account of its effects; Orthodox theology speaks of ancestral sin, whose chief inheritance is death.
Scripture References
- Genesis 3
- Romans 5:12-21
- 1 Corinthians 15:21-22
- Ephesians 2:1-10
The Questions
- How does Adam's act become the act, or the condition, of his descendants? Work on this question in the Workshop
- Is Romans 5:12 teaching inherited guilt, inherited corruption, or the universality of death? Work on this question in the Workshop
- Is the Fall a historical event, a theological account of the human condition, or both? Work on this question in the Workshop
- What exactly is lost or damaged in the Fall? Work on this question in the Workshop
The Positions on This Subject
Catholic
Original sin is transmitted to all by propagation, not imitation: it is the privation of original holiness and justice, remitted in baptism, in which concupiscence remains for the struggle but is not itself sin in the baptized.
Eastern Orthodox
What Adam's descendants inherit is death and corruption rather than personal guilt for Adam's act; sin is a sickness of nature unto death, and baptism is its medicine, regenerating the one baptized.
Methods Brought to This Subject
The methods of theological discovery demonstrably worked on this subject, each with the reason it belongs here and the evidence of its use.
History of Exegesis
This subject's central doctrine was formed by a reading: the Latin text of Romans 5:12 as Augustine received it. A method that studies how the text has actually been read across the centuries is not background to this subject; it is where the doctrine's own history is kept.
Evidence of use: Augustine's anti-Pelagian writings, including On the Merits and Remission of Sins (412), argue inherited guilt from the Latin rendering of Romans 5:12, and the history of that reading is the documented origin of the Western doctrine of original sin.
Objections
Federal headship is objected to as unjust representation: descendants are condemned for an act they did not choose. Realist accounts are objected to as metaphysically obscure. Accounts that soften original sin into an inevitable feature of finite development are objected to for dissolving human responsibility for evil into the structure of creation.
Sources
Primary: Irenaeus of Lyons, Against Heresies, Book V (c. 180); Augustine of Hippo, The City of God, Books XIII-XIV (c. 417-418); Council of Trent, Decree on Original Sin, Session V (1546); Westminster Confession of Faith, Chapter VI (1646).
Secondary: Henri Blocher, Original Sin: Illuminating the Riddle (IVP Academic, 1997); Tatha Wiley, Original Sin: Origins, Developments, Contemporary Meanings (Paulist Press, 2002).